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AIDS in Africa - Who cares?
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
What with 2/3 of AIDS sufferers being in sub-saharan africa, does anyone really give a shit?
Should we, the west, just let them all die off and possibly take the disease with them? Someone on another board I read suggested leaving the africans as a kind of test tube and hoping that some kind of natural immunity will come about over the years.
What can the west do? What should the west do? Should we 'impose' ourselves on the africans, even to the point of destroying their cultures, in order to help them?
Should we, the west, just let them all die off and possibly take the disease with them? Someone on another board I read suggested leaving the africans as a kind of test tube and hoping that some kind of natural immunity will come about over the years.
What can the west do? What should the west do? Should we 'impose' ourselves on the africans, even to the point of destroying their cultures, in order to help them?
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I remember reading these articles on these urban legends going around in that area saying that if the men had sex with a virgin, they would be cured of AIDs so a lot of babies were and still are being raped. I can't really put into words how I feel about it, it's a mixture.
The president of south africa doesnt believe that HIV leads to AIDS and so refuses to address the issue properly which is leading directly to more cases.
I give a shit, in answer to your question. The people dying of AIDS are that; they are people. How would you feel if you and your family were infected with HIV; you wouldn't want someone to help?
Your test-tube suggestion represents an evil abuse of humanity in persuit of science far surpassing that managed by the Nazis. Apart from its morally sickening facets, it is also highly unlikely to work, as HIV mutates on an almost daily basis.
We in the West can continue AIDS research and attempt to provide aid to the Africans.
Frankly, this whole thread is disgusting. Do the decent thing and delete it.
This is a serious issue but the suggestions in my post were not serious. It appears to me that nobody gives a flying fuck what happens to the people in Africa. That is why i made this post, I feel very strongly that we arent doing anything near enough to help people over there.
If you think so little of me as to think i would seriously advocate such things then I really dont know what to say...
I'm just curious as to how much of that vaccine will actually make it to Africa
http://www.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30700-12028304,00.html
Did I read a different comment to you?
The impression I got was that Balddog was disgusted by what the other board member had said. His final question really gave a clue to his true feelings...basically stuff doffing our caps to their culture, when peoples lives are at stake.
You really shouldn't be so reactionary dude.
and perhaps even (shock, horror) sell them the drugs at an affordable price :eek:
Yes you are right. Why not just sweep it under the carpet and pretend that everyone feels the same way that we do. Its much better to hide our heads in the sand...
When you have the leader of [possibly] the stongest nation in Africa suggesting that AIDS and HIV aren't linked, then you know that they have a bigger problem than we ever will...
Go back and read what the man wrote. The "test tube" suggestion was not his. He was repeating, without hint of his own opinion, the suggestion of one or more un-named others.
So was the Holocaust. Would you delete that from the history books?
Can there ever be such a thing as an offensive fact?
Just because the African nations choose to prattle away their money on armies and private jets they can't afford, does that mean we should provide them with free drugs?
The king of Swaziland is buying a £15 million private jet. At the same time the average male life expectancy in his country is set to fall to 30, but this is our fault because we won't GIVE them drugs and food.
No, I didn't seriously believe you would advocate such views, but as I made clear in my response it would not surprise me for you to take them up to bolster your precious right-wing image. I didn't pick up on your sarcasm. I apologise.
I agree that we aren't doing enough, and need to do more. I recently read a paper on a new AIDS vaccine being developed at Oxford that is about to enter phase II clinical trials, but could not help but be concerned that even if it were successful, the drug super-companies will snap up patents and start charging their excessive prices, making the vaccine unavailable. Luckily the political will is shifting against this, and it is likely that in the event of an effective vaccine being developed, the companies will be forced to supply it to organisations such as the WHO at almost zero profit for distribution in Africa. Perhaps it's too early to begin discussing the AIDS vaccine, but this drug company issue is certainly important in Africa currently, what with them attempting to extort money out of governments that can't afford to pay.
Then there is the potential AIDS catastrophe looming in China, which the government there has been late to respond to and has lost vital ground in the process. I think the AIDS pandemic is going to get worse, before it gets better.
People criticise Blair and other world leaders for being just that - world leaders. Frankly, however, I'd rather my Prime Minister be at the forefront of international initiatives to provide aid to Africa than be discussing why the 10:03 to Cardiff was late again this morning in a House of Commons so bored that you can actually hear the snoring. We have a lot of mixed priorities in the Western world, and I'd like to see a broardening of our outlook to beyond that of our insular island; to helping those in the world who are genuinely poor. With AIDS so endemic, those genuinely poor are also likely to be those most at risk, and it is near impossible to discuss AIDS without discussing poverty generally.
I have little time for people who claim that we shouldn't be interfering in the culture of these nations; it smacks of an excuse to sit back and do nothing. I think that the preservation of lives and an increase in standard of living are infinitely more important than "protecting culture", and it is abundently clear that it is possible to do both.
I did genuinely misinterpret the post, probably through tiredness.
I didn't mean we should sweep away sensible discussion of the problem (which this thread has turned out to be); I made the suggestion of deleting the post when I was still under the completely mistaken impression that Balddog was suggesting that we shouldn't give a shit.
Sorry folks
at a time when demand for the necessary drugs has declined in the west. Partly because we don't have as much of a problem...
Oh, in that case let his people die :rolleyes:
No-one suggests that we give Africa the drugs, just that a realistic price is set. Different economy, isn't it...? £50 would mean more to them than £500 would to you...
Is it? Is it clear we can do either, let alone both?
Where do you draw the line on interference? When is it our business and when is it not? To couch the issues in terms of Star Trek's phrase, what is your "Prime Directive" and where and when does it apply?
The third world accounts for over 4 billion of the world's population, and is increasing exponentially.
Perhaps the leaders of the west will secretly see the AIDS pandemic as a sickeningly efficient form of population control.
The first case of AIDS was in the USA in 1981, however HIV can be traced back to SIV, common in Monkeys in central Africa. And it is thought the first occurence of HIV occured there sometime in 1959, from a blood sample obtained from a male, now living in the republic of Congo. There are many people who believe that it may be the result of an oral polio vaccine that was tested in 1951 in the region on monkeys by American scientists as there are striking similarities between SIV, HIV and the vaccince that was being tested.
So maybe, HIV and AIDS are an accidental/deliberate manmade disease.
If it was manmade, and deliberate then the scientists may have done it after forseeing the massive increases in population in the third world.
Who knows, but whoever made it, and for whatever reason, noone can doubt that it is a plague of biblical proportions, that afflicts the poor and the weak.
If people are going to suffer and die as a result of a policy of not interfering for the sake of risking their culture, then there is the line.
We don't need to completely erase their old culture and install our Westernised systems, but we can offer education and medical treatment which works within their culture, perhaps changing it slightly, but ultimately benefits them. For example, education can be given on safe sex, and condoms supplied, without requiring them to abandon their culture's take on sexuality and standardise with the West. It's about meeting compromises, not engaging in absolutes.
I dont have a problem with that to be honest..They have more than paid for anything they can ask of the west in the 500 years that we have been taking their natural resources..
First step would be writing off their debts to the west...
Until the basic issues are adressed, the finer tuning isn't going to have the desired impact. History shows that eliminate one disease and another appears, usually in the developed world, purely because of poor hygeine and a lack of education on cause and effect of various bacteria and viruses. Some say its natures way of controlling population, its not an entirley absurd suggestion, for reasons I'm sure you are aware of.
Going over and making a huge effort to eliminate HIV is very much a short term and ineffective solution, its no use spending millions / billions tackling the problem only for another to appear straight after.
I care a lot, but then you already knew that!
I despise the term 'interfere' when applied to topics like this, if we can save peoples lives then we should, its bot even that hard, mass education and distribution of drugs that are comparitively cheap to manufacture and distribute, seems easy, I can think of no good reason not to help......
Only if AIDS is an evolutionary selection process... looks a bit more like a rather indiscriminate and eventually deadly disease to me. (Unless there's a genetic 'key' for HIV susceptibility that I've somehow missed the discovery of.)
However... it could be that it is a selction process to weed out the ignorant (willfully or otherwise), the superstitious, and the careless from the population, thus put a bit of a control on the issue of over-population... "susceptibility" appears linked to those three traits.
There are times when we think alike.
Worrying, isn't it
The majority of AIDS cases are caused through carelessness. Whilst I accept that Africa has a HUGE education issue, I do think that we shouldn't ignore that fact
Perhaps this is a form of natural selection arising from, and inherent in, the capitalist system on which the world is now based?
I think this is one thing which you really cannot pin on capitalism.
I agree that poverty and poor education go hand in hand, but every nation and every continent has widespread poverty. The national leader of African countries really need to take some responsibility rather than blame this on the west.
A rich person is far far less likely to contract AIDS than an impoverished person.
And I wasn't trying to pin it on capitalism, just pointing out that if we're going to insist on it being some form of natural selection, it is overwhelmingly the poorest people that are being filtered out.
Contintents have "widespread poverty" in some areas by the standard of that continent, but not in comparison with the whole world. Where in Europe does poverty as bad as that which is widespread in Africa exist? Where in North America?
As for the issue of responsibility, yes, some African leaders are not ideal, but many of them got to where they are today thanks to the decolonising policies of the West. And I think that we, in the West, as fellow human beings, should use our ample resources to help those in dire need. To quote FDR, "when your neighbour's house is on fire, you don't haggle over the price of your garden hose". And as Balddog pointed out above, anything we give them has already been paid for, probably many times over, by the amount of resources taken by us over the last 500 years (inflation adjusted, of course
[Edited because "the US" isn't a continent. Pendantism...
Keep in mind that an AIDS like virus/disease wiped out the ancient Greeks around 300 ad!
Only quarentine can control and contain the disease and only after universal testing...doesn't have to be brutal or inhuman...but to allow it to spread unchecked is both!
:cool:
I don’t know anyone who lives in Africa. Do I sit in bed at night thinking about the millions dying of Aids, errm No, is it something I care much about, No.
Things like this must have happened hundreds of times in the past. Plagues, Mass Famines, Killer diseases, there is still more of us on planet Earth than ever before, we’ll survive.
Paul